BJP to use DU Prof's critique of Scahar Panel Report in polls

Published: Tuesday, June 3, 2008, 21:08 [IST]

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New Delhi, Jun 3 (UNI) Recommendations of the Sachar Committee on social educational and economic backwardness of Muslims is going to be the main target of the Bharatiya Janata Party in its electoral campaign for the coming Lok Sabha elections, the party indicated at its National Executive Meeting which ended here yesterday.

The party sees the appointment of the committee and implementation of its report as further consolidation of the Congress' policy of so-called appeasement of Muslims, and this was going to one of its major poll plank.

The party delegates to the meeting were distributed a booklet, which is a a scathing criticism of the Sachar Committee Recommendations, written by Delhi University professor Rakesh Sinha.

The author has argued that the recommendations would lead to further communalisation and so they should be rejected completely.

He claims that there was no transparency in the working of the committee, and its members twisted facts and figures. The author has particularly attacked the committee for suggesting delimitation of constituencies so that the Muslim population in different places could form one constituency.

Prof Sinha has also said that work in the committee was allocated in lopsided manner. Members with secular credentials were not given important work, whereas those with a biased mind were given work which was not even in the terms and reference of the committee.

The seven-member Sachar panel had been constituted by the UPA government at the Centre in March 2005. It submitted its report in November 2006.

The panel found very low level of literacy, and poverty among Muslims besides dismal representation in civil services.

BJP sources said the book would come very handy to its cadres in attacking the Sachar Committee Report during the coming polls.